


spaces and places

by bookhobbit



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: POV Second Person, Pre-Canon, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-15
Updated: 2015-08-15
Packaged: 2018-04-14 19:40:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4577358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookhobbit/pseuds/bookhobbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Childermass, from the beginning - but not to the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	spaces and places

**Author's Note:**

> While I'm about uploading slightly older work, here's this. I wrote it about three weeks ago and posted it on tumblr and hey why not put it here now. Done for a little while (at least till I finish something else, ha) so sorry for two in a row.
> 
> This was kind of a little experimental vignette - I wanted to see how far from the jsmn narrative style I could go and still have people feel in character. It's also the first present-tense fic I'd written for this fandom and boy was that a relief.

You are six and it is cold and you are hungry; your mother holds you and tells you there will be food tomorrow.

You are six and you are learning how to pick a pocket silently, how to tell which pockets are worth picking. 

You are six, and you think you already know what you will be.

Six years later and you are twelve and eldest of a gang of child thieves, which makes them your responsibility. You can't afford scruples; you can't afford ambitions either, although you have a few anyway, bright in your chest, keeping you warm sometimes and burning you others. For the moment you're needed, but it's all going to come crashing down in three months and then you'll be alone and purposeless. You'll spend half a year stealing on your own and another three months in jail for it, two more years at odd jobs, before you realize you know you could be something better.

You are sixteen (barely) and a sailor, which you're hoping will provide better opportunities for advancement than your life so far has. It's not looking good - the bos'n doesn't like your smart mouth and now that you've learned French well enough to speak and read you are growing bored. Another sailor is selling some cards that look interesting; you ask him for his price and it's too high so you content yourself with an explanation, instead, which he gives you for free.

You follow his explanation and you think it looks easy enough - just drawing cards and reading what they have to say - and so you tell him. He laughs, and says, _well then, lad, if you can tell my fortune I'll let you copy them free of charge._

You do and it's just as simple as you expect and he turns ashen white when you tell him that he'll be drowned dead in a year because he knows it's the truth. You don't pity him. It's all right there in the cards, clear as day, and if he can't see it, it's his misfortune.

After that there's not much left for you. You have too many questions and too much to learn to spend your life this way. There are longer voyages, it's true, but you've been hearing the words of the Yorkshire game in your head,  _I greet thee, Lord_ , and how will you bid him welcome into your heart when you're a thousand miles away on a foreign shore? You leave with your Yorkshire-accented French, your unmatched hand-drawn cards, a tattoo on your shoulder, a half-buried longing for the North and home, and most of all a sense that you could do more than this.

You try service for a while, with papers acquired from sources you oughtn't still have. Trouble is, gentlemen want you to stand straight and stiff and silent. They want to feel themselves your betters, and they don't want your insolent manners or sly sideways smiles. Your sharp tongue, which you're starting to learn to curb but not fast enough, and your curiosity, which you’ve never quite managed to tame, are not desirable traits in the living mannequin they want. They're not above you, and you won't let them pretend they are.

So you are eighteen and back on the streets and thinking about picking pockets again and then you are nineteen and in service to a man barely a decade your senior and yet already old.

He pays well because it's safer to buy your servants' loyalties than starve them into betrayal, but that's not not what makes you stay. What does is this: magic. Magic, and more books than you've ever seen. You can’t look away from either.

He has a power, Norrell, one that you've never seen before in a lifetime of longing. He's dull and dusty and knows more about magic than any other person alive. He's rude and shy and fussy, and his library is the most fascinating thing you've ever seen. He lives in a house built by the Raven King and never speaks his name, flinches when you say  _John's Farthings_ in the summer. He is a magician and he denies the Raven King as his master or his inspiration with a badly-hidden bitterness as if at a betrayal or an abandonment.  

You don't know what you've ever expected of the Raven King yourself. Never enough to feel abandoned. A return, maybe, like most every Northerner. A thread to connected the disjointed and contextless fragments of your life. You've got the one and haven't quite given up on the other yet, so maybe it makes sense that you still believe.

You wonder what Norrell wanted and was denied, that he should feel its ache so keenly still.

Later he will tell you, distant and detached, just what it was he looked for and how little he found. He'll tell you how lonely it is, being the only real magician in England, and you'll wonder why he doesn't teach others. You'll wonder why he doesn't teach you. It doesn't matter, really; you learn anyway.

But though he'll never trust you that far, Norrell sees something in you, it seems, sees what you've been trying to show everyone you've met since the day you realized there was more to you than quick fingers and soft footfalls. You're still a servant - neither of you forget that and God it sticks in your throat sometimes - but you're valuable. He listens to you without commenting on your posture and while he chafes at your sarcasm he hasn't dismissed you for it yet. There's something like respect between you and for now that is enough.

You bide your time, practice your cards, read books, learn magic. You’re waiting for something, and you know exactly what it is.

The king is coming back. One day, sooner or later, the king is coming back.

You are going to be ready.


End file.
